National Soccer Hall of Fame star Cobi Jones has a pretty cool house in California—a Spanish-style villa built in the 1920s. He also has an English bulldog named ZuZu that tends to slobber, as well as a wife and young child. I know all this because Jones’ home and family are protected by ADT.

Jones is a participant in an interesting new video advertising campaign from The ADT Corp. called ADT Home Turf. Not only does the video series feature virtual tours of famous athletes’ home for the curious—all the while explaining how the athletes’ ADT systems protect those homes—but it also is tied to a sweepstakes offering a free ADT system and sports tickets.

Here’s how ADT puts it: “Check out how ADT helps some of your favorite athletes secure their own home turf and … enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win an ADT system, a year of free monitoring, and a trip for 2 to a professional basketball playoff game including tickets, airfare, hotel and spending money.”

I got to learn that Jones has an affinity for tequila and that he gets his trademark dreadlocks professionally done. And I also got to see him deal with a “false alarm.” His smartphone notified him that his ADT system detected someone entering his garage side door. The intruder? ZuZu, who got a gentle scolding. Jones instructed his dog to play with dog toys instead of scoping out his in the garage.

After ADT spun off from Tyco this past fall, ADT's CEO Naren Gursahaney told me it's "not a moonshot" for the company to increase its residential penetration from the industry standard of 20 percent to as much as 40 percent. Clever ad campaigns like this should aid in that goal.

ADT CEO Naren Gursahaney said recently that it’s not a “moonshot,” and Honeywell Security Products President Scott Harkins said his company shared the expectation that it could happen. But given that the rate has hovered at 20 percent for years, is it realistic to believe it can be doubled? Or is that just optimism from the corner office?

The ADT Corp. won praise from Florida Gov. Rick Scott at an event this week at which ADT announced it will add 120 jobs at its Boca Raton headquarters, according to a newspaper report.

Florida state, county and local governments have pledged $1.6 million in a public funding incentive package to persuade ADT to stay in Florida and create the jobs, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. It said the jobs would be created over the next couple of years and be in “human resources, information technology, finance, legal and other positions needed at a corporate headquarters and public company.”

The paper quoted ADT CEO Naren Gursahaney as saying at the event that ADT already has added 600 new employees this year in its offices throughout the state, and that ADT has “committed to continue to grow our workforce here."

Here’s more from the Sun-Sentinel report:

The security company was offered a $1.6 million incentive package to remain in Boca Raton and create at least 120 jobs. Palm Beach County approved a $184,000 job growth incentive grant as part of the package.

Gov. Scott [who attended the event] said the incentive package is based on a formula to provide a "five times" return on taxpayer dollars. Enterprise Florida has given economic incentives to about 140 companies this year that have made commitments to create 22,000 to 23,000 jobs, he said.

Scott said he was pleased ADT chose Florida for its headquarters instead of Texas, his rival in job-creation efforts. ADT has a large office in Dallas.

Palm Beach County Commission Chairman Steven Abrams pointed out that of the 46 corporate headquarters in Palm Beach County, nearly half of them are in Boca Raton.

"You have to have a plan. The City of Boca Raton has a plan backed up by dollars and that's making a difference," Abrams said.

In 2010, ADT was offered $1.3 million in incentives to invest in its new North American corporate headquarters at 1501 Yamato Road. At that time, the company committed to creating 20 jobs over five years.

ADT has 16,000 employees worldwide, 700 of whom work in South Florida.

Sarah Cohn, ADT director of media relations, has told me that it is “normal practice” for a lot of companies to seek such public incentives. “Many state and local governments seek to incentivize companies to stay in their areas," she said.

In fact, ADT, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 1, was just one of three companies that Palm Beach County commissioners recently unanimously approved to receive such incentives, according to the Sun-Sentinel. Aerospace company Pratt & Whitney and Digital Risk, a financial services company, each was approved for $300,000 in county grants and millions more in state and city funding to create jobs, the newspaper said.

The ADT Corp., which just became independent in September, says its Pulse product is doing so well that it predicts that recurring revenue will grow by 4.9 percent to 5.2 percent in fiscal year 2013, the company said this week in a report on its Q4 and fiscal year 2012 results.

“We delivered solid recurring revenue growth fueled by the continued success of Pulse in the residential and small business security markets,” ADT CEO Naren Gursahaney said in a statement. “Our focus for 2013 is to deliver meaningful shareholder value by leveraging our competitive strengths to accelerate growth and through the efficient deployment of capital.”

ADT reported that in Q4, recurring revenue was $742 million, up 5.2 percent. The company said that was "driven by 4.4 percent growth in average revenue per customer, which rose to $38.87, and 1.1 percent net growth in customer accounts."

ADT also is initiating a dividend and has a share buyback plan. Here's what Bloomberg News had to say on that this week:

ADT Corp. authorized a $2 billion share repurchase program and initiated a quarterly dividend after investors George Soros and hedge-fund manager Keith Meister called on the home-security company to buy back stock.

The buyback will end in November 2015 and the quarterly dividend will amount to 12.5 cents a share, the Boca Raton, Florida-based company said in a statement today. ADT was spun off from Tyco International Ltd. (TYC) in September.

In October, billionaire Soros joined Meister in urging ADT to buy back about 45 percent of its stock with borrowed money to take advantage of low interest rates after they became the company’s biggest investors. ADT today reported adjusted earnings per share of 43 cents in the fourth quarter ended Sept. 30, matching the average analyst estimate. Recurring revenue rose 5.2 percent to $742 million.

The company has more than 6 million customers in the U.S. and Canada, providing security to homes and businesses with products including the ADT Pulse system.

BOCA RATON, Fla.—The new stand-alone ADT’s announcement this week that it has hired cable industry veteran Arthur Orduña has the blogosphere speculating that ADT is adding a “cable guy” to make it more “cable-friendly” and ready for acquisition by a telecom or cable comp

The new ADT has just created a new position—that of chief innovation officer—and today announced that Arthur Orduña has been appointed as the new CIO. He’ll report directly to ADT CEO Naren Gursahaney, the company said.

Here’s more from a news release from The ADT Corp., which is based in Boca Raton, Fla. and is newly independent after splitting off from Tyco International:

Mr. Orduña will be responsible for technology vision and strategy across the entire company. He will create a strategic roadmap for the full lifecycle of new and existing solutions; help define future solution and product architecture and functionality; and strengthen ADT’s relationships with key technology companies to position the company as a partner of choice.

“Arthur brings a fresh perspective and deep technology and product management expertise to ADT’s bench of senior talent. He will play an integral role in spearheading the long-term vision for our portfolio and creating a culture of innovation at ADT," [CEO Naren Gursahaney said in a prepared statement.]

Mr. Orduña, 47, recently served as a consultant to PayPal, a division of eBay Inc., in a business development role in their Emerging Opportunities group. Prior to this, Mr. Orduña spent several years as the chief product officer and chief technology officer at Canoe Ventures, an advertising technology company founded by the top six U.S. cable companies that provide software and services to national television programming networks. Mr. Orduña has also served as senior vice president of policy and product at Bright House Networks where he was responsible for all new video, broadband, voice, and wireless product development and deployment. He has previously held senior roles at Vivendi-Universal and Integrated Systems Inc. A former dramatist and journalist, Mr. Orduña received a B.A. degree from Cornell University.

NEW YORK—The ADT Corp. CEO Naren Gursahaney has set a bold goal. He wants the newly independent ADT—which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 1—to increase its residential penetration from 20 percent to as much as 40 percent.

I reported yesterday that The ADT Corp. had done well on the New York Stock Exchange on its first day Monday as a publicly traded company. The positive trading news seems to be continuing today. ADT’s stock was trading at $38.96 just after 2:30 p.m. today. It opened at $36, according to news reports.

To celebrate its first week as an independent company, Boca Raton, Fla.-based ADT is also gearing up for a ceremony this coming Monday, Oct. 8. That’s when the company, which has nearly 6.4 million customers in the United States and Canada and nearly 16,000 employees, will ring the opening bell at the stock exchange.

The company says that CEO Naren Gursahaney, Chairman Bruce Gordon, and CFO Kathryn Mikells and others will be joined on the bell podium by longtime customers Tom and Kathi Guarino of Glen Head, N.Y.

According to ADT, “thanks to ADT’s home monitoring system, the Guarinos were alerted last year during Hurricane Irene to dangerously high carbon monoxide levels in their home. The alarm prompted ADT’s trained call-center experts to contact local first responders, who raced to the Guarino residence and provided life-saving medical care. The family attributes their rescue to their ADT system, the company’s team of trained specialists and skilled first responders. The Guarinos also have an ADT system in their family-owned business in Glen Head and have been ADT customers for nearly 20 years.”

It sounds pretty impressive—and I’ll be there! Keep tabs on our site next week to learn more.

ADT’s split from Tyco isn’t taking any steam out of the monitoring giant’s sails. In addition to becoming an independent publicly traded entity Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, it plans to add 150 jobs at its facility in Irving, Texas by the end of November.

“I think we’ve added 200 jobs in the last several months and we’re looking at another 150 as we continue to expand,” Shawn Lucht, senior vice president of operations at ADT, told NBCDFW.com on Sept. 27.

The additional jobs will be spread across many departments at the company’s Irving campus, one of the largest ADT facilities in North America. Among the departments standing to gain will be the monitoring center, one of six that the company operates.

Dinesh Chand, one of the newer employees hired at the monitoring center, told NBCDFW.com that the department has almost doubled in size during his tenure there.

“When I got here about a year or so ago, we had a little over 200 people,” he said. “Today, we have close to 400 folks here.”

The company is aiming to expand further through a pilot program with Best Buy. The consumer electronics retailer is selling ADT security systems at three of its stores, ADT CEO Naren Gursahaney recently told SSN’s Tess Nacelewicz.

Part of the approach is “to generate leads and create appointments,” he said, because the company still believes that security “is an over-the-kitchen-table type of sale.”

For anyone looking for company on the NYSE, it’s easy to find: the ticker symbol is ADT. Company officials will ring the opening bell there on Oct. 8.